AN. This hasn't been betaed as much as normal, so it not as high quality as the last chapter. Beta by
@Trek,
@Esprit and
@hoth
0o0
Chapter 09: Relocation
0o0
*+3 charges for Interlude 06*
*Power Buy Attempt 3.7.28 Magitek Mastery (Final Fantasy VI) (600). Not Bought. Banked 400 points.*
Taylor focused as her power grew into four before trying for a perk, but failed to pick it up, knowing from her prior history that this meant there was a new interlude.
The perk she didn't get was interesting. Given its cost of six charges, she knew it was a big one and even with the limited overview she could see only confirmed it. It was the mastery of Magitech from Final Fantasy VI, a series she had discovered from her PHO thread because despite being a magical series, it had magitech that people counted as 'tinker' worthy and thus from quite a few of them suggested the series starting mainly in Final Fantasy VII.
Final Fantasy VI hadn't been on the list, and when she researched it herself to find out why, she had found that Final Fantasy VI had been more steampunk, Final Fantasy VII was when the games started to go more high tech.
But that didn't mean there wasn't Magitech in Final Fantasy VI at all. It had the beginnings of magitech before the series moved to more developed Magitech in later games.
Given that her striker was Magitech, Taylor could easily see how much better it's final design could become with this, so she locked it in. A 2 charge tax was not a bad price for a synergistic effect that would amplify a lot of what she did best.
Taylor then turned her attention away from the book she had been reading to try and relax. While she was relaxing she had turned off most of her mental boosts and senses, seeing the world as it used to be before she got her powers, for a while just being herself without everything that made her greater.
Deciding that was enough time spent relaxing, more so as she wanted to get a proper Striker made for herself sooner rather than later, Taylor turned her powers back to full and left the books alone to go start building.
Just because she was about to get something that would help her make better designs in the future wasn't a good reason to delay the first generation striker.
0o0
When dinner time rolled around, Taylor noted that Amanda hadn't called her to say the session was done. After changing into her costume, Selene made her way to go see what was going on there.
Before Selene could make it into the therapy bay proper, she saw Lisa, or rather Observer in costume, was heading that way herself, so she decided to see what the girl wanted and intercepted her in route.
"Hello Observer." Selene greeted her.
"Hello Selene, Amy is still here?"
"Yeah, she's still with Amanda." Selene confirmed with a nod at Observer. "I was just going to see if they want to take a break for dinner, and if they do Amy will likely want to join in. Which means I want to address something first. As we talked about before nothing about me should be mentioned, but I will let you decide if you want to reveal the details of your power problem, essentially anything that doesn't involve me you can talk about."
"Meaning what exactly?"
"Basically you can talk about whatever as long as it does not involve my details. And don't lie if Amy asks if you are a parahuman, you can refuse to answer. Amy will be under my anti thinker protection, so your powers are not going to work anyway..."
"You know I can't stop it right?"
"Yes, I know that, I can tell from the data that the scanner on your neck has been collecting."
Observer put a hand over the device on her neck, clearly having not considered that Selene could conclude that much from it, quickly realizing that she likely could, given how much it recorded of her powers.
"Now you don't have to tell her everything about yourself. Just tell her you're a parahuman but refuse to say what your power is and I will consider that good enough. Understood?"
Observer quickly nodded yes.
"Good, I get dinner put together then go fetch her."
0o0
Thanks to the boost from her super kitchen, getting dinner together only took a few minutes, and then Selene walked back to the Counseling Bay to fetch Amy.
Stopping outside of the room Amy was in with Amanda. Selene hit the buzzer and waited until the door opened.
"Yes, Selene, can I help you?" Amanda asked.
"I just wanted Amy to know it dinner time and if she-"
"It's dinner time already?" Amy injected, as she looked around the room for a watch.
Selene smiled under her helmet, knowing that a clock had not been placed for this exact purpose. She didn't want Amy to see the clock and ask to end early because of just the time, and so there was no clock that the girl could see.
"Yes, it is." Amanda confirmed, "I was going to let you know in a few minutes anyway."
"I didn't do anything today, I should get home-"
"No, Amy." Selene interrupted her. "You did a lot today, do you really think you wasted nearly 6 hours with Amanda?"
"I don't think you did, Amy. I think we made a lot of progress in helping you with your issues." Amanda added.
Amy looked between the two in contemplation reflecting on the session..
"Look, Amy, come have dinner with me and my friend, then you can go back to talk with Amanda more. You are normally at the hospital until just before midnight right?"
"I'm not allowed to stay any later." Amy confirmed.
"Helping people is important, but helping yourself is important too. How can we Heros help others if we don't take some time to work on ourselves first. let's take an hour break for dinner, and you can come back to talk to Amanda for a few more hours and I can bring you home at 10. How does that sound?"
"That sounds great, shall we go have dinner?" Amy looked over at Amanda.
"I am having dinner with my husband, you kids have fun. I will be back for you at 7 PM Amy, see you then."
Amy looked over at Selene, as she asked. "Your Friend?"
"It will be faster to introduce you. Come with me." Selene indicated and after a brief pause, Amy moved to follow her.
0o0
"Amy, meet Observer, Observer, Amy."
"A parahuman name and a costume, you're a Cape?"
"I am." Observer confirmed.
"I have never heard of you before." Amy continued.
"Not surprising because like me she has been keeping a low profile until she is ready. There is a lot of history that Observer should have the right to share at her leisure. They are not my secrets to give, so if you want to know more, you can ask her about it."
Selene indicated to the table and Amy sat down and the world class master chef level food was passed around.
"What are your powers exactly, Observer?"
"My name is the only hint I can give you right now Amy. My history hasn't been the best, and I would rather keep it private for now."
"No worries I understand, let's eat."
*5/8 charges*
0o0
Dinner was held in almost complete silence, Observer had indicated she didn't want to talk, Selene didn't feel like talking and neither did Amy.
Afterwards Amy returned to therapy for another 3 hours before Selene went to fetch her to get her home.
"Does it always feel this good after therapy?" Amy asked Selene as they left.
"I think so, at least it did for me." Selene agreed. "I was on cloud nine when I finally started to talk to Amanda. You're lucky in a way Amy; you're not as bad off as I was."
"Amanda said I could come back tomorrow?"
"Of course you can. Let's start heading out so you're not late getting home and we talk about it on the way, what time are you thinking starting at, 8?"
Amy considered that for a minute then nodded. "That will work."
0o0
Selene set Amy down near her house and followed the girl to the door. Before she let Amy head inside, she spoke at her.
"Amy, here."
"What is this?" Amy asked as she looked at the phone number that Selene was showing her.
"It is my phone number, I forgot to give it to you earlier- it is a PRT number that I got from Dragon now that I am a Guild Candidate."
Amy looked at Taylor and smiled lightly. "I had not heard yet, congrats! I hope you can get into the guild. And thanks a lot for your help, it means a lot, I know you come from a well off family but I can imagine that I would never have been able to afford such a therapist for such long hours even if my mom allowed one."
"I am glad to help Amy, we heroes need to stick together and help out where we can. Feel free to call me in case something comes up over night. I will swing by at 8 AM to pick you up if I don't hear back from you before then."
Selene could tell that Amy was clearing thinking that Selene was expecting something to go wrong when she went inside.
Which Selene was, she understood Carol enough to know what was going to happen, given that the woman had forbidden Amy from seeking therapy.
Selene wasn't sure where that put Carol in terms of morality from that, certainly well below major villains, but it was rather high up there. To outright forbid a girl that would need therapy from getting it and cutting off any sources of funding that might let her do otherwise… Not to mention the hostile way she thought of her own daughter….
Selene was half surprised that Amy hadn't already snapped. It almost seemed like her adoptive mother wanted her to snap and turn into a villain.
"Right, I'll see you tomorrow." Amy agreed.
"Take care."
Selene flew off, but stopped a few buildings away and turned, then focused her senses on Amy, listening in as the girl made her way inside her current home.
"Where have you been?" Carol demanded in a rude tone the second the girl entered.
"I was out."
"The hospital called to say you never showed up."
"I never said that I was going there when I left."
"You should tell us where you are when you are out."
"Why? I am not five any more." Amy snapped back.
"You're the world's greatest healer and there are any number of gangs that would kidnap you if given half the chance. How can we know you're safe when you're not where you're supposed to be?"
"Where were you Amy?" Vicky injected before Amy could answer.
Selene felt an internal conflict in Amy as the girl was asked the question.
The conflict was short, so Amy did answer after a delay, clearly distracted in her tone.
"I was out with Selene."
"And you didn't invite me to come along?"
"It was kind of last minute, but I suppose you could come along tomorrow."
"No, you're not going anywhere with Selene; you're going to the hospital."
"No, I'm not. I am going to spend the day with Selene." Amy threw back.
"If you had done your job today, then you could have done that. There are people at the hospital still hurt because you didn't heal them."
"The hospital has doctors that can take care of them. If they are really critical they would have called."
"Amy. A Hero's duty is to help people."
"And before a hero can help someone they have to help themselves. Do you want me to keep using my powers until I am too tired to control them properly and make a mistake? I need some time off!"
"Which it sounds like you just had. Tomorrow you go to the hospital."
"Or what? Lock me in my room so I can't heal people? Kick me out of the house? Complain to the PRT that I won't heal people?"
At the lack of an immediate reply to that, Selene tilted her head to look in the direction of the Dallon household, wishing she could see this directly. Perhaps she could pull her warehouse video logs to get a better perspective later.
"It seems you are hell bent on not being a hero, I knew this would happen someday. Out! Get out of my house. I never want to see you again!" Carol finally decided on her answer.
"Mom!" Vicky objected.
"Fine, I'll do just that, some family you are!" Amy snapped back.
"Amy!" Vicky directed at her sister in shock.
Selene focused less on what was being said and more on what Amy was doing, which was exactly what she said, walking out of the house. No attempts get anything, just leaving into the night.
After a quick "Mom how could you." Vicky left to give chase to her sister.
Selene was tempted to wander back to interfere now, but she wanted to see what Amy would call her, and so waited.
"Amy! Mom didn't mean that."
"She meant every word of that Vicky; you saw how convinced she looked." Amy objected.
"No she didn't, she is just under stress, the next attack will be any day now and with all the legal issues at her firm due to the PRT taking action against Mr. Barnes, and everything, it's been hard on her and where are you even going anyway? Aunt Sarah is that way."
Selene noted the whole legal situation against her uncle, and had to wonder about that, it was something she made a note to look into later, likely by talking with him about what had happened with Emma. Even though the past events didn't impact her mind negatively because of her power she still remembered them, betrayal was betrayal. She hadn't really gotten around to talking with him as it hadn't even been 2 weeks since the incident yet and she was giving him time to process and talk with Emma and the crimes the girl had committed before sticking her nose into that mess.
"I'm not heading over to Aunt Sarah's."
*6/8 Charges*
"Then where are you going? It is not like-" Vicky cut herself off when she realized what she was about to say.
"That is exactly why I am leaving. You can't even name one of my friends that would take me in for a few nights."
"I… Amy it…" Vicky fumbled for words, clearly flabbergasted.
Selene heard Amy start to dial her phone and as she expected her own phone started to ring.
"Hey Amy." Selene answered it.
"Hey, Selene, sorry to call so suddenly but I need a favor."
"You're calling Selene to ask her? When did you get her number?" Vicky asked.
"Hold that thought Amy. I will be there in a bit ."
Still out of sight of the pair of girls, Selene took off into the air, quickly circling upwards and then flying into the two girls and coming to land in front of them.
"You got here quick." Vicky noted.
"I did just drop Amy off a few minutes ago, and I was kind of expecting something like this to happen so I stuck around the area."
"You were expecting Carol to kick me out of the house?" Amy asked.
"No, I didn't think it would be this extreme. I just thought she would blow up when you went around her back to her therapy."
"Therapy, what?" Vicky injected.
Selene looked over at Amy pretending to look surprised.
"I never got around to mentioning I was attending therapy today. Carol kicked me out before I even got there."
"Why were you attending therapy, Amy? You don't really need it."
"That's not true Vicky. When we were out on patrol my passive medical scanners picked up the stress Amy was under." Selene directed at the girl. "Just because the therapists weren't able to help your mother or father properly, doesn't mean they are worthless. If you get a good one that wants to help you and is willing to work to make sure it happens, that is a whole different ball game."
"Instead of going to the hospital, I spent the whole day talking to Selene's therapist, and it was amazing. You know how in fiction people just talk to a therapist and all their problems seem to melt away? I didn't think that was possible before I talked to Amanda. But now that I have? I feel so much better. If it wasn't so late I would still be talking to her and I already made plans to go back tomorrow."
"Talk about what? You know that I am here for you Amy." Vicky noted.
"Vicky." Selene was quick to interrupt before Amy could think of an answer, she wanted to control this conversation carefully, it was a fuze just waiting to be lit if things went wrong. "What you tell your therapist and what you tell your family are very different. You are there for her as her sister, who provides love and unconditional support. But everyone needs some privacy, I am sure there are things you wouldn't want to talk to Amy about either.... But that doesn't mean you don't need to talk about those things to someone, to get them off your chest, to work through your issues. To be honest, Carl's stance on therapy is outright insane given all the PRT regulations on that. "
"Regulations about therapy? I can't seem to recall anye. So I can't say that I am familiar."
"The PRT requires all Protectorate members, including wards, to engage in weekly therapy sessions, upon penalty of being deemed unfit for duty or subject to the Youth Guard's ire. It works too, as therapy is incredibly important for everyone who has endured a trigger event, with my avoidance of villainy as an object lesson."
Selene paused to give a dramatic bow.
"While I agree with many of New Wave's policies, particularly those regarding accountability and the absurdity of masked vigilantes, and seriously considered joining after the Protectorate's proved itself untrustworthy, Carol's eccentricities convinced me to turn to the Guild. New Wave started with lofty ideals, but never regained its stride after your aunt passed away, but I'm getting sidetracked."
"Yeah, you are." Amy agreed. "Can I stay with you?"
"Of course, I can put you up in my lab with Observer, I have housing units in the lab for emergencies and overnight stays, it will annoy her to no end which is a bonus, it would benefit her to have some more people around anyway."
"I'm sorry. Observer?" Vicky asked.
"She is a parahuman friend of mine who is currently staying with me."
For am extremely generous definitions of the term friend that Selene left out. Lisa was still closer to a prisoner.
"Staying in a tinker's lab. Is that even safe?" Vicky asked.
"I have the place split into living areas and my workshop. The latter is locked and so long as Amy doesn't go trying to break into locked doors to see what is inside, it is perfectly safe, probably more safe than outside actually."
"Right. If Amy is going to stay there, I want to know where this lab of yours is." Vicky injected.
"Vicky-"
"No, it's okay." Selene interrupted. "You want to carry Amy? We can head over now."
"Of course."
"Right just give me a second to give Observer the heads up."
Selene sent a quick text message to Observer, letting her know that she was bringing over both Amy and Vicky.
With a mental glance at Lisa inside the warehouse to make sure she read the text, Selene noted that Lisa had expected it, and wasn't the least bit surprised.
*7/8 charges*
0o0
The trio of girls arrived at the shack and headed inside.
"So how is Vicky supposed to access it without your key exactly?" Amy asked as she indicated to the door.
Selene could tell it was an indirect way of Amy trying to ask for a key for herself given she was going to be staying there.
"I can just break the door down if I have to." Vicky pointed out as she looked at Selene making it clear that she would.
"I doubt you will be able to break in, but I am going to give you both a key."
Selene reached into her pockets and took out two cellphones.
"I already have a cellphone?" Vicky asked as she looked at it puzzled.
"They keys to my lab, lose it and you can't get in. It will only unlock for you, and it will show you how to get here in case you're lost. Should be user friendly enough."
Selene watched as both girls focused on the phone. Amy accessed the menu on her new phone to open the door, hit the open key and looked up when the door shimmered and the room behind it appeared.
"They are also half cell phones."
"Half cell phones?" Vicky asked.
"The phones can call other phones within my personal network, but when it comes to other phones they can only dial out, not get calls. Not unless we get you set up with a PRT number. One you have that in place they are proper cell phones. Better than anything you can buy on the market."
"Tinker phones of course. How long will they last between charges anyway?"
"You don't need to recharge them, they will probably last 100s of years."
"That long?" Vicky asked, eyes wide.
"Tinkertech. It just works." Selene agreed.
"So if you have these phones, why did you use that key the first time?" Amy asked.
"That is my override key. The app can be set to only allow you to open the door between a certain time or any other number of restrictions, none that I am setting for either of you but I am just letting you know it could be done. My override key always works, in case I accidentally lock myself out or something. Anyway, come inside, I'll give you the quick tour."
The pair of girls followed Selene in and she indicated to the various doors in the hallway.
"My lab is through that door, the other side of which is guarded by defenses which I won't specify. All I can say is that they are non-lethal up until you penetrate the core area. I can't allow you in there right away, maybe later but not tonight. You have already seen the door to the Counseling Bay, and the one next to it is the Medical Bay-"
"You have a full medical bay in your lab?" Vicky injected sounding just as surprised as she was.
"Why wouldn't I want a medical bay with a trained doctor on standby next to my tinker lab?"
"I…" Vicky stopped as the girl clearly tried to think of a reason not to, and finally had to relent with. "Well I guess if you're rich enough or have a support structure that would let you do that, you would. But geez, I doubt even Gallant has such a thing, and he's loaded."
Selene could tell that Vicky was keeping the lie up, but mindful of how the PRT did things, so Selene didn't call it out. She had no official way to know Gallant and Vicky were dating and so had no reason to call Vicky out on the lie about her boyfriend.
"I have a very good support structure, my parents gave me a big fund to pull from for my cape activities. Which Amy, I suppose I should have offered this sooner, I hope you got excellent medical care in the more physical sense at the hospital. But if there are any physical issues my on staff Doctor, Joe, can take a look at you. You too Vicky if you like. Would be even better than you could get elsewhere too."
"Better? That's quite the bold claim to make." Vicky noted.
"My Doctor uses, and helps me design, the medical tinkertech that I wished to share with hospitals that the PRT blocked, for good reason mind you but I am still miffed about that. He uses the stuff that is still Blackboxed and I can't mass produce it. But it is an entire Tinkertech medical center with highly trained medical staff."
"What? Really?" Amy injected. "Why don't you treat people in it."
"I reserve it for my friends and family, It's limited even with all the tech so I can't open it to everyone. I am planning on working out a deal to let the Guild use it but that's going to take a while. It's not like I can open it up to the public given its location, It's really high quality care but of limited capacity."
Amy pulled at that as she quickly backed up. "Forget I asked, please I didn't think-"
"It's okay." Selene interrupted. "I understand, I really wanted to help everyone too before finding out the logistical limits of my tech and the legal issues. Anyway, it's getting late and I am sure you two are tired, so let me show you around the housing complex, then I can get back to my lab."
"Don't you mean, get to bed yourself?"
"I'm a Noctis cape." Selene answered.
"You're a Noctis... Tinker." Vicky noted in surprise.
"Yep. I spend my night hours tinkering."
"You know how many tinkers would kill to do the same?"
"Ya I know what you mean. It's been a real boon." Selene agreed with a nod. "Which is why I can Amy up in my bedroom for the night. I only use it to change, and I can do that elsewhere for a night. I can get her a new bedroom put together later. Come on, I suspect Observer is already in bed herself."
*Power Buy Attempt 3.7.28 Magitek Mastery (Final Fantasy VI) (600) +200 Lockin Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Selene had often wondered what the higher cost perks would bring to her, having seen some of the 500 and 600 powers before. They seemed extensive. This perk ended up taking eight of her charges to secure.
Everything from Star Trek, at least the United Federation of Planets, was a mere 4 charges.
And now she knew why this one was worth the six charges.
Everything she enchanted without using clothing required her to figure out how the effect worked, she had perks that made it easier to do so now, but this perk just completely kicked that restriction away.
She was now nearly capable of enchanting anything with magical effects or even to allow the use of freeform magic through items. From this perk alone, nothing else, she could enchant a suit of armor that not only made a person stronger, but let them cast magic, much like a Striker but at a far deeper and more powerful level. Magnifying the magic the person had in ways that a Striker could only dream of. It didn't just work on armor or people too, it worked on everything, she could enchant parts of anything to make it work better.
And it got even better. If the user didn't have magic, she could just give it to them with this. Infusing anything, technological or biological or even a mix of the two with magic. It worked for any magic she knew too, not just the magic system she got from this perk, her energy projection, Strike Witches, World of Warcraft, Geneforge, Final Fantasy XIV and Touhou all were possible sources she could draw on to infuse into people in addition to the Final Fantasy VI.
None of them were as easy to implement as Strike Witches was, as her source for that was so central to its perk based nature, where the others were just fragments of their various systems that had to be grown out, but she could work out the systems for the others in time.
All those perks mixed, all this knowledge became something she could just grant to people. Not quickly, it would take time, and forcing it too quickly would drive the person insane because they hadn't adapted to their new powers yet, but it could be done.
Given how complete her knowledge of Strike Witches was, Selene decided she would start there, more so when it was this series that gave her the most direct combat abilities and thus it was where she would focus.
The other series had hints of combat systems, but nothing that she just got from her other perks yet, she would have had to develop it from scratch. Even this perk didn't give her direct spells to cast, just the ability to enchant items and people to make them magical.
This had big implications for how she handed others now. She no longer had to test if Lisa was a Witch or not, she could just make her one if she wasn't.
She could give Lisa an option for power that didn't require her to keep using her powers that caused literal brain damage.
Lisa had decided she would become at least a little more heroic. Lisa, who Selene knew, wanted to stick around now because she saw how powerful Selene was and knew that she would be safer with her than anywhere elsewhere.
*Power Buy Attempt 1.1.6 Ageless II (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Selene blinked at realised that now she wouldn't die of old age thanks to her new perk. In some ways it was almost pointless, she was sure she could easily have made herself immortal with some research, but a power based effect that did the same was nice.
Mindful of these new perks, Selene moved to show Amy and Vicky around her housing complex.
0o0
After giving Amy and Vicky a quick tour, Selene led the pairs into the bedroom where Amy would spend the night.
Selene indicated to the master bathroom attached to her bedroom.
"That is my own bathroom, but you can use it for tonight. I will arrange a more long term option for you later. You can grab a pair of my Pjs for the night as well, they are new and unused but they might not fit that well, but we can deal with your clothing situation tomorrow as well."
"I can bring your clothes in the morning." Vicky indicated to Amy and Selene.
"Of course." Selene agreed. "You can use the phone to find your way back here if you can't find the place. Also you can leave whenever you're ready, the phone will open the door to the outside. I am going to head over to my lab and get started on my research."
0o0
Although Selene had told them she was going to do that, she made her way to Lisa's room where the girl was waiting for her, not in costume.
"You had Amy move in." Lisa noted.
"Ya, as I told you in the text." Selene agreed.
"Do you expect me to just run around in costume the whole time?"
"As I told you before, that's your choice. Amy isn't going to be the last person that ends up here. I am going to need more capes to study, if I am going to have any chance of fixing your powers."
"Then are you going to be asking her if you can study her?"
"Eventually yes, I don't want Amy to think I allowed her to stay here just to study her power."
That wasn't a real concern for Selene, she could convince Amy easily anyway, but she wanted Lisa to think that it would take time.
Selene watched as Lisa clearly considered it, the girl had some real fears around what her power was doing to her. Concerns deep enough that she was willing to share a lot of details with Amy if it meant fixing them sooner. Selene wasn't the least bit surprised, not when Lisa's powers caused literal brain damage.
"Would it help speed up the cure if I convinced them to help sooner even if I have to reveal some details about myself in the process?" Lisa asked.
Selene considered it a plus side, and with Lisa looking to move to be a Hero, even if slightly, she decided to make a offer to Lisa, it would require Lisa to take steps to tie her more to them, but if Lisa was willing to take those steps, Selene was willing to reward her for such.
"Tell her about your powers, and what is happening, and I will consider that good enough if you want to ask her to help out. I won't ask Amy myself just yet however."
"That means I can tell her what you're doing to try and help me fix it?" Lisa asked, and Selene could tell that the girl would have just done that without asking normally, but was being extra careful here, because she didn't want to upset Taylor.
The desire to join her side, regardless of the costs was clear under that, the seed she wanted to grow in Lisa to make her a real hero.
"So long as it is after you tell her about what is happening to you, sure. if you want you can tell Vicky as well."
0o0
Taylor soon left Lisa to go to bed, departing from Lisa's room after Vicky had already left the warehouse. Amy was in the shower, So Taylor set an alert to go off if Amy left the bedroom.
Neither of her residents could hear inside their bedroom and each of the rooms thanks to the improvements from Simple Scientific Solutions allowing perfect privacy, other than Taylors precog anyway. Taylor didn't add Amy's new bedroom just yet even though she could. She would add it after both Lisa and Amy were asleep. Then install the upgrades she had in the other rooms of the house to bring it from the simple room her power gave her for Amy to a proper bedroom for the girl.. Taylor couldn't create a room using the Housing Complex perk unless Amy had some indication she wanted a room first. Amy didn't have to agree to stay to get a room for her, but an indication she would consider it was the minimum her perk required.
Amy was using normal blankets on her bed so the girl wouldn't wake up after an hour fully rested for the night.
It was a change that Taylor had made while Amy was in therapy, expecting this outcome ahead of time.
Both girls would notice the new room, but Taylor would just tell them she made it overnight.
It was a tinker's lab after all.
With them settled in, Taylor made her way to the hallway and out into the shuttle that had stopped a little over a light year away from Earth, ready to do one of the riskiest, or maybe least risky things she would do.
She had no idea how Ziz would react to active scans, but if Ziz decided to go to the source, an entire light year away, it wasn't necessarily a bad thing because Ziz would be running away from Earth.
She decided that the worst case was Ziz noticed and had some sort of FTL to get there quickly. The best case was Ziz not noticing at all, and the case where Ziz slowly made her way out to her shuttle was less than ideal, but still good, since it would take her years to reach her that far out. Years where she wasn't attacking the Earth.
Even if Ziz could make some kind of FTL tinkertech to get here faster, as long as it was not too fast Taylor had more than enough time to escape back to earth and activate the self destruct on the shuttle to reduce anything useful Ziz could get from it to stardust, indistinguishable from the background scattering of atoms and empty space.
*Power Buy Attempt 2.1.20 Who's Got The Powa (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Taylor briefly noted that her warehouse gained its own power source that was enough to power a city, at this point thanks to Star Trek technology she was playing around with things that could power an entire planet. It was free energy in a way, so it would let her beat entropy if she survived long enough for that to matter.
Shaking her head she refocused, Taylor pulled up Ziz on her shuttle's passive sensors to see where the monster was currently.
She took a deep breath before hitting a key, FTL particles steamed towards earth, waveforms collapsed, exotic physics danced to her tune and the active long range scans of Earth started as the shuttles small active scanning array activated.
With the shuttle sensor array alone scans were not detailed, especially at this range. The only thing she could tell was that Earth had 'primitive' life on it compared to federation technology. She could pick up the overall output of Earth and a rough population. But full details would take a much larger array, like the one she had built which was waiting to be assembled.
Ziz didn't so much as twitch frozen, hovering in the sky like usual.
Taylor coded with every thought she had but keep one spare to keep watching Ziz. That thought stream waited, focusing to see if going up full scale scans would cause something.
But there was nothing.
After an hour of programming scanning analysis softwares, Taylor relaxed and moved to exit the back of the shuttle, ready to start unloadingher cards to build Sensor Array 01, which she would use to house the full sized sensors and power them.
The station was only going to be large enough to house the entire suite of sensors, the data from the sensors was going to be streamed to her computer network for processing at what was currently Mars Base 01.
Once she got her base of operations in Alpha Centri online, she would move it there for better security.
As it was only the sensors, communication systems, power to run them and cloaks to hide this sensor, Taylor could finish this in a day.
Then she would have access to high resolution active scans of Earth. The current array was only built to scan the volume of earth not its full range at the same time, the array with full scanning ability of its entire range at the same time would need to be much bigger, but she didn't want to do that here where she was pointing a sensor, a big sensor at that, at Ziz.
Those sensors would go up at Alpha Centri at the shipyards.
These sensors would give her the same data, but only for Earth's Solar System, and they would never be pointed away from it. The information she needed locally was far more critical then what was around their immediate neighborhood.
0o0
Taylor returned to her warehouse when she saw Lisa wake up.
The much lighter monitor she had on Amy, showed Amy went into the bathroom after she woke up. Taylor swapped into her costume and made her way to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for four, taking only a minute to warn her father that Amy had moved in and asked him to not join them today as she wanted a bit more time before she unmasked to Amy and if just her father showed up, questions of her mother might come up.
Danny agreed to that, and so Selene set up breakfast for just the four of them, fully expecting Vicky to show up on time.
Vicky turned up to be a bit earlier then Selene was expecting as Amy was still in the bath.
"Hey Selene." Vicky greeted her, then tapped the suitcase in her hand. "I'm going to drop off Amy's clothes in her room."
"If you want her room, I built her a new one last night. The one she is in is my room."
"You built her a room?" Vicky asked.
"It doesn't take me long, really, it's just a room. Not like I built her some tinkertech armor overnight."
Vicky paused to consider that for a bit, then nodded. "Yeah, I suppose with your power armor it doesn't take you long."
"Amy is still in the same room, she is in the shower right now."
"Right, I'll go drop them off there so she can get dressed and she can move them when she transfers her stuff to the new room." Vicky noted as she left.
"I assume you're staying for breakfast as well?" Selene called after the blonde.
"Of course." She called out from the hallway.
0o0
Vicky returned shortly and grabbed a seat at the table.
When Selene saw that Lisa was heading in their direction without a costume, she quickly spoke up. "Hold on a second." and moved in to intercept the girl.
"Vicky is in the kitchen."
"I decided that if Amy is here, I am not going to be in my costume 24x7." Lisa indicated. "So I am going to tell her who I am, not like it matters."
"Alright." Selene allowed it with a nod and directed the girl into the kitchen area.
"Observer?" Vicky asked puzzled. "You don't have a mask on."
"I'm not going to bother with a mask, not with Amy staying around here well, I'd go insane trying to keep it up. You can call me Lisa." Lisa offered.
"Ah, you can call me Vicky." Vicky looked over at Selene.
"My situation is much different than hers, plus my armor is extremely comfortable, we talk about that when Amy joins us so we don't have to repeat it, I am staying in costume."
0o0
A few minutes later, Amy joined them taking a seat at the table, she looked over at Lisa then on noticing her sister was there, frowned.
"Lisa, or Observer, decided with you sticking around she wasn't going to keep up the whole costume thing. Which is fine with me, because we never interacted outside of our cape IDs before she moved in here. So long as it was before we first interacted, you can know everything about her and wouldn't have the slightest clue who I am out of mask." Selene informed Amy as she served breakfast.
Amy studied her plate briefly then asked. "Is this normal for your breakfasts?"
Selene glanced over at what she had made, with her super kitchen, and the literal ability to make anything she needed for food once she had a code or scan of it. Taylor had gone and ordered some meals from 5 star hotels and then scanned them so that she could eat delicious food.
She had brought out a big breakfast for the group, but she didn't think she went that overboard.
Steak and Eggs. The eggs were done two ways, sunnyside up and scrambled. Hash Browns with onion and peppers along with pancakes with three different kinds of toppings for them.
In the center of the table she had put a pot of coffee along with various fruits.
*Power Buy Attempt 2.4.9 Classroom (50). Bought. Banked 50 points.*
Reroll since last perk was fully bought/brought to some level of ranking and points > 0
*Power Buy Attempt 1.4.14 Polyglot (50). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Selene focused on her two new perks, the first gave her a classroom which updated itself from everything she knew or had, so currently it was a perfect holodeck for teaching that would make it easier to teach and easier for people to learn inside.
The other perk granted her fluency in any language after just an hour of reading or listening. Not even needing to study it, just being lightly exposed to it would be enough. It was even retroactive to anything she had been exposed to for at least an hour, which given the state of the bay covered a lot of different languages.
She could already see how both of those would be useful, strangely useful for her long term plans. She was starting efforts to build a colony on another world, she would need ways to recruit people and train them, and she got the perfect way to do both.
With universal translators, once they were on her side they could understand everyone but the initial recruitment would need her to know the language.
Both were some rather nice perks to pick up, and rather cheap at that. She would set up audio of languages to play in an empty and soundproof section of the warehouse when she got some free time so she could listen to it with one of her thought streams and warehouse postcog to get started on learning as many languages as possible. Studies had shown that languages allowed more diverse thought patterns and better mental ability so that would be a bonus too.
Her focus went back to Amy as she answered the girl about her breakfast choices, pretending that this was the sort of normal for her.
"It is, is that a problem?"
"How do you still fit into that armor?" Vicky asked, "Because if that is not almost skintight with how well it hugs you, you have got to be tiny."
"I never had trouble with my weight before."
"Damn your one lucky girl." Vicky muttered. "If I want to keep fitting into my own costume, I think I have to skip the rest of my meals today."
"Or you could just not eat it all, I don't mind." Selene informed her, as she looked at Lisa. "But I believe Lisa here has something to share with you."
"You do?" Amy asked her curious.
"Selene here didn't exactly give me a lot of notice that you were going to move in, so I had to think about how much I wanted to tell you about my powers and after thinking it over I decided it better to tell you what they are, and more critically why I am here with Selene."
"Why are you here?" Vicky asked.
"Let's start with what my powers are. My power is basically enhanced intuition, I can expand on and connect the dots for things I focus on, a lot like Sherlock Holmes, but even better."
"Even better?" Amy asked.
"I could puzzle out your phone passcode in a few minutes, that sort of thing. It is a very powerful thinker ability, but as I learned after I met up with Selene it has a rather big drawback I didn't realize at the time I got it. I assume you both know how thinkers normally get headaches when they use their powers too much?"
"To the point having a headache is almost a part of the thinker classification." Vicky agreed. "I'm doing a class on parahuman at the local college."
"Right, I don't know if it is the same for other thinkers, although we assume it is, but those headaches I get are the result of my power literally killing off parts of my brain when it activates."
"You're dying?" Amy quickly injected in alarm as her hand started to move for Lisa with that. Only to stop completely. A motion that Selene didn't miss as she saw that Amy wanted to heal Lisa first, only to stop when she realized what that meant about the claimed limits on her powers.
"She is fine, her power heals the damage it causes over the next few hours. So only if she pushes it too far she would die. There is also the issue of loss of self if she uses it too much and the damage spreads too far outside of her Corona Pollentia, but from what I have been able to tell her power resets it back to mostly the pre-damaged state, with minor changes to make her more willing to use her power only, so she hasn't been slowly wiping her personality."
Amy stopped debating if she should or shouldn't do something as she looked at Selene with that.
"Are you certain of this?" Vicky asked in alarm.
"Ya I did detailed scans" Selene agreed, "I guess Amy can probably see it herself given how she reacted."
"I can't change brains, but I can see them with my power." Amy lied.
Selene nodded at that, pretending she accepted the lie as it was.
*Power Buy Attempt 3.2.5 Whispered (Full Metal Panic) (600). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Selene briefly focused on that perk, finding it would have made her very advanced in engineering, it didn't seem to be as advanced as even Dead Space, although she knew that perks did boost other things past it. At the price of 5 charges tax, she wasn't willing to lock it in, so she let it go.
Selene turned her attention back to Vicky and decided to use the commonly accepted name of Passenger for the symbiote, given the theory of the same name, Selene started to explain.
"The information her power, or rather her passenger is feeding her-"
"Wait a minute, Passenger theory has been discredited." Glory Girl injected.
"I have proven it myself. Our powers can operate independent of our own desire, when they find things interesting they focus on them more, and they will activate to change the environment around you in ways they feel better suits you. You're not really in charge of your powers unless you consider them more like a trained dog that does what you tell them, most of the time."
"How exactly have you proven it? Because the evidence disproving it is quite good."
"Can I show you that after we are done with breakfast. Because even if you disagree, it doesn't change the fact of what is happening to Lisa's brain when she uses her powers."
"I don't really want to make you hurt yourself, but may I?" Amy spoke up.
"May you what?" Lisa asked her.
"Watch you use your powers to see for myself? If I am looking for it, I can prove it right now."
"Sure." Lisa agreed with a nod of her head and offered her hand. "Let me know when you're ready and I will invoke it."
Selene could tell that Lisa wanted to double check what she had been told with that, but didn't doubt what she had been told enough to have asked for it herself.
The girl had very personal experience with how bad her headaches got after all. Bad enough that she took causing yourself brain damage as a matter of fact from just being told it.
Amy took Lisa's hand and after a few seconds noted.
"Ready."
Lisa focused and Selene could tell from the wince on Amy that she said. "You can stop."
Lisa did so and Amy focused a bit then informed them.
"It's like Selene said, when her power feeds her information it overloads the cells around the connection, killing them, and it spreads over a larger area the more information she is given by her power. It slowly repairs the damage afterwards and since I was watching I can confirm it is what was there before, so she is not suffering any degeneration of self. I doubt she could push hard enough to kill herself. It is more likely she would pass out before it got that far, but if she could it would eventually kill her if not given enough time to recover between uses."
"Right. Selene found out about this, and offered to help me by finding a way to fix that."
"Do you have any idea how much research has gone wasted into finding ways to fix or alter powers?" Vicky asked.
"Those same people doing research that said Passenger Theory was wrong?" Selene pointed out.
"I won't reveal what Selene has shown me, as I promised her not to, but I will say that I believe she will have tools that would let her fix me eventually. But it is not something she knows how to do just yet. She needs to research it more."
"Do you need any help researching it?" Amy noted as she looked at Selene.
"That's up to you, you don't have to help out if you don't want to."
"What?" Amy blinked as she looked over at Lisa.
Lisa informed her. "Selene only has me and herself as Parahumans to study, and her power isn't broken, but mine is. Before she can formulate a proper way to do anything, she needs more people with powers to scan. I would like to request your help to speed it along, but as Selene said, whether you help or not you are welcome to stay here. All we need is some brain scans of you and your power. Which isn't that different from an MRI under her sensors. You just have to sit in front of the sensor. I would like to request you help."
"Of course we will help." Vicky offered for the both of them.
"Amy?" Selene asked.
"Vicky just said we would."
"She did. But will you?"
"I'll help out as well." Amy agreed with a nod of her head. "We do that after breakfast?"
"We can. I'll bring you to Joe, the doctor, after breakfast so he can get the initial scans done."
0o0
After breakfast was over, Selene directed the trio of girls into the medical bay, where she had Joe already waiting for them.
"Hello." Joe greeted all of them, as he made his way over, scanner in hand.
"Why does everything look like it out of Star Trek?" Vicky asked looking around, unlike Lisa, neither she nor Amy placed the hologram as from being from the Earth Aleph version.
"Because that's my tech it ended up looking like it so I went with the theme. Doctor? How's Vicky?"
"Better than most people you had me examine before."
"Yeah, Amy keeps me in good shape." Vicky agreed.
"There are a few minor issues that I like to touch up. But nothing that is worth being worried over."
The Doctor turned his attention to Amy next scanning her.
"You on the other hand, are in much worse shape."
"Worse?" Amy asked.
"Long hours without proper nutrition or rest. Your body is showing clear signs of extended stress, and if you were not so young your body would be in a lot worse shape. I can fix the damage, but if you don't start getting proper rest, you're going to send yourself to an early grave."
"He does have access to very good medical gear I have designed, so he likely could fix up what he said. But you don't have to get it fixed right now." Selene was quick to inject.
*Power Buy Attempt 1.4.4 Leadership Mastery III (200). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Comprehensive knowledge of Leadership filled Selene's mind as she came to a rest, and on seeing there was another level to this perk, she locked it in, seeing how useful this would be in the long term.
Besides letting her inspire people to greatness, and to do good, it included skills around leading organisations, businesses, milliatries and governments. Even how to make people personally loyal to her to the point they would die for her. Given it was looking increasingly like her long term goals would require she set up her own nation, likely an Empire so she could control the uplift and ensure the survival of humanity long term, not to mention how much this would help when she joined the Guild.
She also knew from her Star Trek skills that properly uplifting a new warp capable race to stand among the Federation took very powerful leadership skills, uplifts gave technology that would lead to infighting and destruction of the race without careful control.
There was another level to this perk. The tax of 2 charges would be nothing compared to what she would get out of this perk. Already she would be a great leader thanks to that, but with the higher level she would be a Leader of Legends. Just the sort of thing she would need to build her new colonies, and uplift mankind to the Stars, to create a utopia.
Selene locked it in as she waited for Amy to consider what she said then the girl asked.
"How long would it take?"
"You? A few hours. Vicky could be done in a few minutes."
"Then please heal me."
"Amy?" Vicky asked her.
"I know what he is referring to, Vicky. I have healed enough people to see how much better they are afterwards and quite often desired it myself. You can spend the time with Selene going over her data on Passenger theory."
"And Lisa can spend her time talking with Amanda as we do that." Selene added in.
Vicky looked over at Selene and Selene waited as the girl weighed her options.
Then Vicky nodded and said. "Sure, I guess that works. If you think it best Amy, I won't stop you."
"Go ahead and hop on Biobed 1." Joe ordered as he indicated to the bed in question.
"I'm off to see Amanda." Lisa agreed with the order Selene had given her, and left to do such.
"Come on Vicky, we can go over the data on the computer in the living area. I'll bring everyone to the lab after lunch when Amy is done."
0o0
After a much lighter lunch a few hours later, one that Selene had put together mindful of what Vicky had noted about breakfast, Selene brought the trio of girls to her lab.
"Woah." Vicky noted as she looked around. "This lab puts my college lab to shame."
"With as much money went into this, it's better." Selene agreed. "Although most of this is for studying my Tinker tech, and those scanners can't be used on people but I did make some specialised sensors that can scan humans safely."
Selene pointed to the table.
"Just get on the table, whoever wants to go first. You don't have to lay down, just sitting on it good enough."
"I guess I'll go first, show them how it's done?" Lisa offered with a bit of a sly smile, before moving to sit on the table.
"I am sure they could figure out how to sit still."
"I don't know about Vicky." Amy muttered.
Vicky let out a chuckle at her sister's teasing.
"Right, either way, I doubt either of you would understand this, but come over here."
Selene took the pair of girls to the station nearby.
"Here the live scans of Lisa. As you can see, my scanner can see everything you want to know, and a whole lot you likely didn't about her."
"Is it really giving the live rate of her cells dying and dividing?" Vicky asked.
"If you really want to, it even gives the live rate of the various subparts of cells as well." Selene confirmed as she zoomed it in on a random cell and let the readouts of everything show up. "Even gives me her entire DNA sequence. There is nothing about Lisa biologically that I couldn't look up if I wanted to with her under the sensor."
Selene showed off the segment of data that indicated the blood flow rate in each of the veins in Lisa.
"Is there anything that this couldn't tell you about her?"
"While she is sitting down on it? Only things that change based on her actions going forward would be hard to tell."
"Such as?"
"Anything that involves adding or removing something from her body. Like for example I can't simulate adding food to her body, only scan what happens once she actually eats something. Natural biological processes without external factors can be projected out though."
"And this much data helps?"
"It lets me map out how her brain would have changed before her power damages it and repairs it. So yes, at least somewhat. Monitoring at this point more to make sure there are no big changes. I still need to figure out the location of her passenger to study it and so on. All I know is that it is remote to her. I am still working on something to figure out how to locate it."
Which was something that Star Trek didn't grant her, it was clear to Selene that Lisa's Passenger was located in another dimension, and she would need to study that branch of technology and puzzle it out.
"Anyway, this is just an update to Lisas existing scans. Your scans will take a bit longer to build the initial data. At least and hour each-"
"An hour each?" Vicky injected.
"Not all at once, we can do five minutes each and update it incrementally. Once a day would be ideal."
"Sure. I might as well go next." Vicky noted as she moved over.
Lisa got off the table as she did such.
As Vicky settled down she asked.
"What about capes beside us two? You need a lot of data right?"
"I've been considering it, but it's kind of a big deal to show my lab to random capes. You two are different, your heroes and I know you both. I don't trust others enough to do this just yet."
*1/4 Charges*
0o0
Monday, February 21st, 2011
0o0
After Selene finished the initial scans of Vicky and Amy, Vicky left for home and Amy went off to speak with Amanda.
Since Selene had nothing left to do to Lisa that day, she asked Lisa to write out things she knew from her time with Coil for a bit then do whatever she wanted until dinner while Selene herself went to go work on her sensor array.
Dinner was spent with Amy and Lisa that day, but they also worked out a system going forward. The three of them would have breakfast together, Selene would have Lunch with Lisa, and Selene would do Dinner with her father while Lisa had dinner with Amy.
Taylor finished her new sensor array in the early morning hours of Monday, as much as she wanted to experiment with influsing magic into items, she needed to have some idea of how to best attack the Ziz before she focused on the best ways to do that.
A tricobalt device should be overkill for her, but Taylor knew she was only going to get one surprise shot before Ziz reacted, and for that no level of overkill was overkill.
Glancing around her now ready Sensor Array, Taylor mused about the whole thing. She did have to upgrade it to get magical readings so it would track her gear, but this was state of the art technology, taken to the limits of how far she could push her perks.
It would likely have made the United Federation of Planets eager to study it given how much she had improved it.
Making her way to the primary core which she had intentionally left inactive before now, Taylor mused how much this might be her future, how rare it might be to be planet side.
Which she felt was likely a good thing. She wanted to reach for the Stars. She wanted to lead humanity to a better age. If she had to do it her own damn self then so be it.
Pulling up the limited systems she had online to make sure that she was watching Ziz, this more than anything might draw her in this direction, Taylor hesitated, glancing at the self-destruct that was in place.
If Ziz turned out to have FTL, she would blow this place and run. Worst case would be that Ziz got it, even then Taylor had made sure to scrub any possible useful info and set up multiple self destructs.
Nodding her head, she hit a few keys and looked up.
The emergency systems activated with a thud, as relays engaged and Taylor could feel the raw magic flow in the air as the Power Core came online, and started to fuel the systems around her Sensor Array, an addition from her Magitek Mastery, and one she had intentionally added with loose mana in the air, she could use it to fuel devices around the station without needing to give them proper power sources.
She could even collect it into a spell to cast at someone, boosting her even more here and if it wasn't for Ziz on Earth she likely would have tried to spread these around earth to give everyone free energy.
Such a thing had to wait until after at least both Behemoth and Ziz was gone. Taylor didn't want to make them both stronger.
The systems came online and Taylor watched as FTL particles steamed towards earth, waveforms collapsed, exotic physics danced to her tune and the live sensor data flowed into her computer systems as the arrays were energized and then scans of Earth started.
Ziz didn't move.
A few seconds later the processing of the data was underway and a hologram of the Earth appeared before her with everything of immediate note marked on the map.
Summaries telling her exactly how many people were on Earth, how many were parahumans, anything she could care to know about Earth was at her fingertips.
Taylor was about to focus on the main issue of Ziz, only to be caught off guard by the number of Endbringers that showed up on her sensors.
There were far more than just three such creatures on Earth. There were, including the current trio, 20 total.
20 Endbringers.
"Shit" Taylor noted in shock as she decided Ziz could take second place to that, she focused on each one, quickly relaxing as she saw each of the additional 17 were in some sort of standby mode.
Ready to wake up, but not awake yet.
Turning her attention to the scanners, Taylor started to read what the scans had on Ziz, then frowned, glanced at her station, not really believing the data.
Then she double checked it, triple checked it and then did it again one last time for good measure.
According to the scans, Ziz had the same mass as Earth's Moon, but that wasn't even the start of it. It had at least 50 layers, and based on their depth and what her sensors could pick up, maybe as many 200 layers that her scans couldn't see.
At 50 layers, spread at different distances that were placed such that she was certain she was missing some as the gaps were all perfect multiples of the smallest gap, anything that tried to pass though was split in half. Half would remain in the same reality as Ziz's herself was, this one, but the other half would be shunted to a completely different reality. A completely different reality for each layer.
Without using something that ignored that effect, anything that attacked Ziz, or any other Endbringer for that matter, would have its attack power reduced by 2 raised to the 50th power by the time it passed all the layers her sensors could see.
On a creature that was as massive as Earth's Moon.
Taylor quickly did some math in her head. Assuming she had to brute force it. She was looking at a weapon that would cause an explosion large enough to Vaporize several light years, and if she was right about the other 150 layers that her sensors weren't picking up on, enough force to vaporize the entire Galaxy.
That much force and energy would do a very good job of accelerating a literal galaxy's worth of matter to near light speed without space warping effects.
Taylor studied the data further, finding it hard to doubt what she was reading, but it only made her wonder who in the world had designed something this strong, then made 20 of them? And where had they gotten the matter to build them without taking apart one of the planets in the Solar system?
"This is what I am up against?" Taylor said in grim determination "So be it, so what if the winged bitch needs such an attack to get hurt, if that's what needed that's what I'll damn well do!" Taylor had yet to unlock even half her total powers, she would be strong enough one day.
There was more than enough matter to do such from one of the larger planets, but why would someone do such a thing?
Why would they make them so tough? If you stuck to pure brute force, each Endbringer was harder to destroy then the entire Galaxy.
Shaking her head to clear that thought, Taylor refocused on her goal and felt uncomfortable as she realized that each layer was made differently, so to bypass them all, you would need to either design a weapon to account for all of them, something she couldn't see how even approach, each layer seemed to had conflicting yet somehow stable effects. If you couldn't bypass them at the same time you had to handle them one at a time.
The more Taylor studied it, the less certain she became about how Ziz was even still around, with so many contradictory forces in such a small area, Ziz should have exploded like she was an uncontrolled Antimatter reaction, or been a light tap away from blowing up anyway.
Not just tank parahuman powers without issue.
*2/4 charges*
What would make it worse was even if you destroyed the Core somehow, the effects of the core keeping the mass stable being gone would mean that Ziz would detonate with the force of unconstrained Neutronium with a mass of the Moon, right on Earth.
Which would likely kill anyone on Mars from the shockwave alone given how much energy would be released in such an explosion.
She could only see how to bypass a few layers right now, she needed more research for other layers she could see, as well as proving how many other layers existed that she couldn't see. She could contain the force of Ziz exploding if she could get Ziz into a prepared chamber or battleground with Dead Space gravity manipulation, so that factor was one of her lesser concerns.
But then to repeat this 19 more times, more so in a rush if the other Endbringers woke up to the death of one of their siblings?
Taylor shook her head, the answer became clear to her that planning to just kill the Endbringers on Earth was a bad idea on its own.
She needed to start moving mankind off Earth, now. Her vague plans to move to the stars suddenly needed to move at a brisk pace.
Her shuttle would arrive in Alpha Centari in two days, and she would need people ready to start moving into the colony. Meaning she needed people she could trust to live in said colony, teaching them how to build and run everything could wait until after she was certain that mankind wasn't going to be reduced to just Lisa, her father and herself.
People she could confirm once she knew who they were, but it meant she needed to code up a search program to find people that were highly intelligent, emotionally stable, heroic and good but unconnected enough to be willing to just get up and leave Earth for good. That was not a large number.
Under her rule, as Empress of mankind, given how quickly things would be set up. She couldn't get it all done without everything if she had anything less than absolute power to support her authority. Uplift in society by using advanced tech to replace the need for her direct supervision would only lead to disaster. A small research base offworld was no longer acceptable, if Mankind was to survive they needed to spread to the stars. If endbringers were this powerful how strong were the things that made them? How did this connect to parahuman powers?
Taylor's mind spun as she quickly tried to prioritize focus between critical and less critical things, quickly zeroing in on the key point.
She wasn't going to be able to defend anything large enough to allow humanity to survive on its own, at least with her current tech, she would need allies, those who could be made loyal to her under her leadership and charisma.
Taylor drew on her perks, quite aware of what she could do now, infusing her magic into people granting magic systems and teaching them.
Of the series that she had something to go on however, only Strike Witches was anywhere near complete, and with how much she could boost it, if she gave her witches legendary strikers that were clothing, legendary weapons based off Thundercats, and a Sylladex that could let them swap them in-
Taylor's mind came to a complete halt as she realized what happened when she added those all together.
"I can make magical girls now?" Taylor noted as she reconsidered it from that view. The only thing missing with all of those would be the sparkles of a transformation and it was an easy spell to do that.
The term magical girl had been on that Taylor had learned from her PHO threads, as a few people had ideas for sourcing tinker powers from some of those series.
"Huh." Taylor noted briefly then shook that thought off as she went back to why she was considering making them, looking at the Endbringers.
Even with a few thousand people with her best gear, she couldn't stop even one of them.
But she wasn't done growing, not by a long shot. She hadn't even filled a 10th of all of her powers she would gain, and with how much some of them granted her, she had a feeling it wouldn't take that many more before she could build weapons to destroy or maybe even control the Endbringers. If endbringers were tools created by someone then surely they had control systems that she could hijack.
But even with that she would need loyal allies to keep the new fledgling colony stable. No man ruled alone. Perhaps she could make some AIs to manage it all but she wanted to uplift humanity, not let them become complacent under government management AIs. She wanted at least a somewhat democratic structure in the lower levels of government even if she would control the top.
Taylor turned her thoughts to those she would ally with, and realized that she didn't have a good candidate to start with. Even with her leadership perk it would take time and effort to inspire deep life and death loyalty to her, after all it was not a master power just superhuman skill.
Lisa and Amy were probably the best two candidates to start with, and of the two, Lisa was the easiest to talk into joining up and make loyal given it would mean Lisa could give up her brain destroying powers but still keep some form of power.
But the girl wasn't a big enough Hero yet for Taylor to feel fully confident in yet.
Amy was better, but she wasn't as bound as Lisa was to her, making her worse in other ways. Inspiring the needed loyalty would take more time and effort for her.
Taylor supposed she could work on her final design for whatever warriors she would need to protect her new empire, using Lisa as a base as much as she could, then when she had someone she could fully trust, she could put the final design into them.
Maybe even Lisa would end up that far, although Taylor had no idea how long that would take as the change to become a hero had to come from the girl herself even if Taylor could inspire it.
Taylor turned her attention to the scans. The Endbringers had been what she was most concerned about and looked into them first, but the automatic programs had flagged other items of concern.
Right now there were four pureblood aliens on Earth… and some 200 half-aliens?
Taylor blinked as she quickly hit some keys to check where and her eyes went even wider as she saw that all four pure blooded aliens, a race unknown to her databanks, wasn't just on Earth but right in Brockton Bay.
Along with about a dozen of the half-aliens.
There was no greater concentration on Earth. The others were more spread out compared to the Bay.
Quickly hitting a few keys, Taylor pulled up the video of their locations. Star Trek Visual Sensors could only show what was in line of sight, and all four aliens and most of the hybrids were out of reach, so she couldn't see what they looked like without going there in person. Her other scanners could scan through stuff but it was not the case for pure photon sensors.
But as soon as she glanced over the location realization started to dawn on her.
The locations that showed up were places like the Palanquin. Or PRT Buildings where she knew Case 53s lived.
Case 53 registered as half aliens to her sensors.
The fact that normal parahumans were not aliens to her sensors was odd.
But not as odd as the four literal aliens in Brockton Bay.
The implication of aliens being on Earth hit Taylor head on, as connections were rapidly made in her mind and the implications of which changed everything.
Case 53 were half aliens, and they had parahuman powers. That meant the symbotes they had were aliens. Aliens that had decided to give humans powers.
But it got worse from there in Taylor's mind as she realized that the Endbringers were involved in this, and her mind leapt to the likely reason.
A stress test for parahuman powers.
They needed worthy opponents to ensure they used their powers to the fullest.
The best reason behind this was that Taylor could see what this was done to try and uplift mankind, but given the danger of the Endbringers, either they had a very bad idea of how to do such or they were using mankind as a giant experiment of the powers they handed out.
The former was just a misunderstanding but not that bad, but the implications of the latter was far worse, as that meant they would take measures to contain them, to limit them.
Exactly what the Endbringers did. They stopped Mankind from escaping with powers. The matron limit made much more sense, the maintenance limits and blackboxing of tinkertech, the limits on some types of tinkertech, the focus of all powers being conflict related. Everything fell into place.
Taylor wasn't quite ready to assume that worst fully, as much as the data and her leadership skills hinted at it, it was still not a 100%, but she knew that she needed to look into it more to confirm it. If it was true, she was suddenly in a very different ball game, which only opened up even more questions about her own powers. Since that meant a second faction was involved.
Or maybe she was wrong about them using Earth as a petri dish, and they were just idiots in how they uplifted mankind, though that looked quite unlikely from what her skills were telling her.
Taylor signed, best not to hang on to an unlikely thread of hope, if she assumed that and took actions it could lead to disaster, until she confirmed one or the other she had to assume the worst.
Whatever it was, Taylor knew she had to look into it now as it changed everything.
Taylor glanced at the clock for only a hair of a second, before changing into her full armor and striker, and grabbing a combadge with a universal translator installed.
She had some aliens to find.
0o0
Selene walked out the closest door she had, and cut loose to travel as quickly as she could. She had debated using the transporter to get there, but decided it was safer to keep that as an ace in the hole.
She had a door very close after all.
Stopping on a roof next to the building she took a few steps closer then came to a stop as her much more detailed short range scans showed her the 'aliens in question'.
Which was just some alien parts contained in some vitals.
Selene glanced over at the building, It was a Merchant warehouse. What in the world were they doing with literal aliens, or alien parts?
It did make her wonder why the alien parts showed up as live aliens on long range sensors when close up they were clearly just parts of aliens, she knew she would need to look at them under even more detailed scans to figure out why. Which meant she needed to extract them.
*3/4 Charges*
But rather than rush in like some brute, she turned around and headed back to her Moonbase.
She had a transporter after all. No reason to go in person like a barbarian when she could just beam them out.
0o0
Selene, clad in her armor activated the transporter and watched as a briefcase was beamed up to her, containing the aliens.
She opened it and took out a tiny vital, exactly what she had seen on her sensors.
Each one contained a mixture of different aliens fragments. Somehow, still alive, but a part of a whole. They were weird too, not carbon based but some kind of exotic crystal that gave dimensional emissions.
Selene thoughts immediately went to Parahuman powers, and she had a feeling these were somehow related to them.
Bringing them to her lab to study in detail, Selene put most of her thoughts on her plans and next steps and the order she would need to do them in.
She needed allies, she needed a good enough base, she needed a world.
So much to do, and so very little time.
0o0
Since Taylor wasn't supposed to have breakfast with her father, she tracked him down first to talk to him as she started to set her plans into motion.
She had coded some programs that had generated a listing of ideal people, but she needed the list processed first. She could do that herself, but she would be a fool to ignore a resource she had on hand.
Taylor didn't have time to go talk to everyone with her full abilities and figure out who was safe and who wasn't. But Lisa did have time.
Lisa's power would let her connect dots and find out things that her programs couldn't figure out.
Provided she could trust Lisa's power, given that it came from an alien that was.
But that was something she could work around now. If she made Lisa a Witch, her new perks would make sure that she could force Lisa's special ability that Witches awakened into a specific one. It would mean making Lisa's familiar a cat rather than what would form naturally, but it would then let her use Lisa's current power as a template for her new Witch special ability.
It would be massively weaker at the start as it would run entirely on Lisa's magic and not whatever the symbiote was providing and from the scale of what Lisa could do, she had no doubt it would be the case. Training and better striker units would improve it to better match the old power and maybe even surpass it one day.
But at the same time, it also meant a cure for Lisa. It stopped whatever feedback Lisa's passenger was sending back to the race that had spread out powers.
There was no question in Taylor's mind that until she knew for certain that this race was just idiotic in how they were trying to uplift mankind, an unlikely situation, she had to assume the worse.
Earth was one big experiment, and the fact parahuman powers were limited to Earth only reinforced that conclusion. They were restricted to avoid letting test subjects escape their cages.
Once she had Lisa converted over, she could assign her properly to vet people from the list her algorithm had generated, non-parahumans, that she could recruit as allies. She would need to double check Lisa's results, especially as Lisas new power would be less effective until she had time to grow. But Lisa also could still work on the list while Taylor was busy with other, more important, things.
It didn't matter how poor Lisa's filtering could be so long as she didn't exclude the good people, the less bad ones she had to review herself the better, given the very sudden time pressure.
The aliens likely knew what she was upto already, Lisa knew Taylor had escaped Earth already and things might get bad for her very fast if they were hostile. Taylor would have to relocate the base location to be sure, another thing to add to the list.
"Dad." Taylor addressed her father. Although she had a lot of new info, she wasn't going to share it with him quite yet to avoid unnecessarily worrying him. She would stick with the things she had confirmed because that wouldn't change his actions anyway.. She needed an offworld colony and he didn't need to know about likely hostile aliens, when she could just claim it was to escape the Endbringers alone. At the very least, she would until she had confirmed the exact nature of the threat.
"Taylor? Maybe we should just block off an hour after I wake up each morning. This seems to be becoming a habit." Danny noted.
"This… might be the last time we need to do it like that. I just found out some rather bad and terrifying news. Far worse than anything I discovered so far."
"Taylor, your bad news so far has been the personal interest of The Simurgh, how can it get worse then that?"
"I finally got a good scan of her, using Federation technology. If she, or any of the Endbringers for that matter dies, they will detonate with enough force that they would destroy my Mars Base, If they were still on Earth when I hit them."
"You can't stop it?"
"I can with the right gear in place. And the good news is they are a lot stronger than anyone on Earth thinks so the odds are good they are not going to accidentally die. But that also assumes no one has a exotic parahuman power that could do it, and I am not willing to take that risk."
Taylor paused a second to let that sink in.
"We need to pull out of Earth, not just you and me, but an entire colony of people, ASAP. My plans for building it up suddenly got kicked into high gear. I want you to bring Kurt and Lacy by after work and I will brief them. I have mixed feelings about the fact that Uncle Alan would want to bring Emma… I'll handle them later after I have things online, I'll probably just put her in stasis on the colony and figure it out later in a few hundred years."
Another pause as if she was debating that briefly, before she continued.
"I am going to start picking out people to seed my world with today, and within a week or so start moving them in. Slow isn't an option anymore. It does mean I am going to have to run the government of my new World, since I will need absolute authority to get this done properly and stop it from deteriorating with the tech I am going to seed to make the uplift go through." She finished
"We are not completely abandoning everyone on Earth to die are we?" Danny asked.
"No, at least I hope it doesn't come to that, I just need to ensure in the worst case scenario if something goes wrong that the population of humanity in the universe doesn't turn into almost zero. I could grab people from some of the alternate Earth so it is not just on us to rebuild mankind if that happens. But it's not something I want to rely one, I don't know if the detonation could reach into the alternate earths given the endbringers nature. More so, I have a feeling the Endbringers and whoever made them would follow us if I tried to evacuate everyone on Earth. They have to be killed or brought under control regardless, and I need more time to design weapons that could stop them. A lot of things really… just don't tell Kurt and Lacy why I want to talk to them, I will fill them in myself, my power should help."
*Power Buy Attempt 1.4.4 Leadership Mastery IV (+200) +200 Tax. Bought. Banked 0 points.*
A vast quantity of new knowledge flowed into Taylors mind, this essentially made her close to the best leader anyone could be and boosted her speed at learning things about leadership to around thousand times usual. Plans she had made with the previous tier perks were scrapped in mass and new more robust types of governments, organisations, and social structures were rapidly spun up in her mind.
Taylor was pleased that it was what she expected, she was a supernatural leader now, she could lead a galactic empire, maybe even something bigger all by herself now. Her new skills showed her what she was missing from her previous assumptions, now she was almost sure that without her guiding mankind it was likely whatever race gave them this power would just use them and dispose of them when they were done, as lab rats they no longer required for more testing.
0o0
After Amy left for school, leaving 'Selene' and Lisa behind Taylor turned to Lisa.
Taylor had told Amy that she was home schooled, the lie wasn't entirely wrong. Her dad had put in the paperwork for her to be homeschooled already. But she wasn't doing anything related to that right now, it never would matter for her given how things were going.
"Let me hazard a guess. It's time for testing." Lisa rolled her shoulders, anticipating future stiffness born of extended inactivity.
"No. I have enough data to fix your power," Taylor informed her.
The next few minutes were going to be incredibly critical. Planning her course of action was a fiendishly difficult process as she debated how to balance operational security, personal ethics, risk-reward balance, and social consequences. However much she might wish to reveal the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth before engaging in a medical procedure, she simply couldn't accept the potential risks of revealing everything to an alien parasite.
Lisa's power processed everything that she heard, saw, or otherwise experienced, ravenously tearing through the available information for useful implications. Since she couldn't directly access it to confound its senses, it would notice when its connection to Lisa was broken. It needed to be neutralized before it realized that she intended to sever parahuman connection, so she needed to intentionally mislead her patient.
Completely hiding the truth was similarly out of the question, as that would require her to knock the girl unconscious and remove her power entirely without her consent. That was an eventuality that she hoped to avoid if possible. She could see how to make that work, regaining her trust afterwards by sharing everything she knew about the passengers, but that would take more time, it would also be a breach of personal ethics, and cause unavoidable distrust for a long while.
If Taylor wanted to meaningfully use her powers to humanity's large-scale benefit, she needed to build relations based on trust rather than fear. Safely handling the inevitable restructuring of society that would result from her resolving the existential threats she had identified so far would require a robust structure of delegation and leadership, which relied on bidirectional empathy and personal social bonds. Trust but verify.
With all relevant factors considered, Taylor decided to mislead Lisa to the minimum possible degree for the minimum possible time. Her white lie was prepared.
"You have a solution already?" Lisa's interest overrode even her suspicion. Fascinatingly, her desire for the solution was dwarfed by her power's intrigue.
"Yes, but there will be some side effects. Your power is going to be slower acting, but possibly more thorough. Expect more consistent inferences trickling in at a greatly decreased rate. The combat thinker aspect of your power will be much less viable. Though you will be able to get it back up to your original level with substantial training."
"But no more brain damage?"
"No more brain damage." Taylor confirmed.
"I can still get everything I do now, it will just take longer?"
"Yep." Taylor nodded.
"How much longer are we talking about?"
Taylor did some estimation in her mind before answering.
"The flow rate should be choked at around one fourth its current level. Training it back up could take anywhere from months to years to decades depending on your talent. We can do this as soon as you like."
"Why would I want to delay a cure? Off to the medical bay!" Lisa exclaimed, her neural patterns scintillating in synchrony with her power's rapidly pulsing activity.
"Let's go, then." Taylor chuckled and indicated for Lisa to follow her.
0o0
Inside the medical bay, Taylor directed Lisa onto Biobed 1 as Joe came over.
"Doctor, I am going to be fixing Lisa's power, as we discussed. If you could sedate her?"
"So long as she is fine with both." The Doctor agreed and looked at Lisa.
"She's going to be fixing my powers, right?"
"A very crude way of describing the entire process. She did mention your modified powers will be a lot weaker?"
"She did, and I am fine with that."
"Then I am going to sedate you now. Just relax."
Joe injected Lisa with a sedative and a few seconds later Lisa passed out.
Taylor checked that Lisa was completely out, and due to that, her passenger couldn't get any information about the environment around Lisa due to Blank.
"Ethically, I feel the need to remind you that completely removing someone's powers to give them a different, weaker one, while hiding facts about it would mean, this is a violation of the Oath we take as medical professionals."
"I took no such oaths doctor, even so, if I didn't have concerns with what her passenger would share with others, I would agree with you here, but this is the only safe way. Please remove her powers, put the Corona Pollentia into the bio-container I made for it, and fix up everything you can at the same time. I need her as healthy as I can before I do the next part."
"Of course." Joe agreed as he got to work on doing just that.
Taylor watched as he started the process, the next steps in her mind already set.
*Power Buy Attempt 3.11.13 Crimson Saint (Maoyuu Hero and Demon King) (600). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Taylor focused on the failed perk as she watched the Doctor work on Lisa, another perk under the Magitech domain, again a high cost perk. This one seemed to be based around turning magic into science and science into magic. A nice perk, but not what she needed to figure out how to kill an Endbringer or deal with the aliens.
She had enough ways to turn magic into technology anyway, if she had the technology to kill an Endbringer already, she might have locked it in to make it easier. But not with what she was missing still.
0o0
A few hours later, the Doctor finished removing Lisa's power and Taylor moved on to her next step.
Which would be hard given how she was going to handle it.
Lisa was still unconscious, just a normal human now. Before Lisa woke up she first needed to make certain Lisa wasn't already a witch.
In order to give Lisa the power she promised her, she would need to make Lisa a Witch, and if Lisa already was a witch before she did such, Lisa would be driven insane from it.
It was easy enough to confirm, placing Lisa into a striker and forcing her familiar awaking would confirm it.
It would wake Lisa up if she was a witch, so Taylor had put a mask on Lisa that would ensure that she would pass out the moment she woke up.
Redressing Lisa in the striker took only a few seconds, and, when nothing happened, Taylor rested her hand on Lisa's shoulder and pushed magic into the girl, acting as a magical kickstart to wake up any familiar that she might have that didn't react to the bond between striker and girl forming.
It wasn't likely given how much power the Striker would feed back into it wearer, but Taylor needed to be absolutely certain that Lisa wasn't a witch before she made offers that required her being made into one.
Nothing happened even as Lisa was infused with enough power to cause mild pain from the sheer volume, so it was now clear that there was no chance she was a dormant witch, Taylor let out a sigh of relief and quickly swapped Lisa back into her clothes.
Once the girl was changed, Taylor moved to wake her, Injecting Lisa herself with a counter-agent to the sedative. Taylor waited as the girl quickly stirred.
Once Lisa was awake she watched as the girl looked around, then sat up and looked very puzzled as she noticed the difference.
"I don't seem to feel my power? Is that normal?"
"Yes, I'm not done with modifying the powers you had, but I had to wake you up in the middle to talk to you about some choices you need to make before I can finish the process."
"You couldn't ask me before you put me under?" Lisa noted as she looked a bit worried, "Should I be moving around?"
"Your fine, I closed everything up before I woke you." Taylor informed her. "Since we are going to have to walk around a bit if you want to be fully informed. But this is where things get difficult. It wasn't that I forgot to ask you before, I couldn't ask you before I removed your old power. The fact you can't feel your power is the same reason I couldn't ask you this before now… I learned some things from my studies the last few days that aren't good, and I need to both explain and show you before I finish working on you."
"What do you mean?"
Taylor indicated to the door with a tilt of her head and said. "I need to bring you elsewhere to show you best."
"Can't that wait until you're done, I would rather like my powers back before I get the info, either as they were or your improved version first."
"Lisa, I can explain in detail why this is the case, you didn't know what your powers were doing to you before, it was far worse than I thought, and you would be horrified if you got them back as they were. That is what I need to explain to you. My improved version is better for you, and I can do that first if you really want me to, but you have to understand that you are going to end up as an alternate form of a Catgirl, or maybe some other animal first if we do the one I can do right now."
"I'm going to turn into a what?" Lisa exclaimed at that.
"A cat girl or another animal hybrid."
"Why in the world would I want that?" Lisa exclaimed in alarm.
"I don't which is why I didn't do it yet." Taylor informed her as she placed a hand on Lisa's shoulder to comfort the girl a bit. "Look, Lisa. I didn't lie about what I could do, I just couldn't explain that before, a restriction that no longer binds me. Once you know the whole picture, you will see why I didn't tell you this before I blocked your powers. If you really want me to, I will undo the block and put you back to the way you were before, though I would have to remove everything I told you before letting you wake up to prevent your old power from learning of it."
Taylor lied about that last bit, there was no way she was reinstalling an alien into her, but she expected Lisa would agree to the new solution anyway when it was properly explained to her.
She could see Lisa take in a few deep breaths to try and calm herself, and after a bit, Lisa nodded.
"Alright, I hope it's something big." Lisa allowed as she got off the bed, accepting the help that Taylor offered her.
"It is, come on. We have to move somewhere else first."
0o0
Taylor took Lisa to the exit and then out into a lounge on the Moon base. One that was located on the surface near the dividing line to let people inside look out of the windows to see both the Earth and the Sun in the sky.
"Lisa, I should start with what sort of Tinker I am. I am sure you managed to guess parts of it. But I have all the knowledge of the United Federation of Planet, cera the start of Star Trek Voyager in my head. As a thinker power, not a tinker power."
"As a what?"
"Computer, open the blinder and replicate a pot of tea with two cups, Earl Grey, hot." Taylor called out.
The computer beeped and the blinders that had been blocking the view of the Earth and the Sun moved out of the way as a whirring sound filled the air.
Lisa spun to look at where the sound came from, Taylor was able to see that her gaze got there before it finished and the girl stared at it, then she spun to look back at the window and her eyes went even wider at that as she noted. "No way."
"Yep, I have all the knowledge of the United Federation of Planets up here." Taylor repeated to Lisa as she tapped her head when the girl looked back at her.
Lisa was in shock as the girl was trying to think though the implications at that, Taylor helped her unresisting form to sit down on a sofa in the room, before grabbing the tray with the cups and placing it on the coffee table in front of the sofa and sitting down next to Lisa as she pour them both a cup and settled in to wait for Lisa to recover.
*Power Buy Attempt 1.1.7 Undead Physiology III (Lich) (200). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
*Lich powers*
*1.1.2 Physical Resistance II (+100)*
*1.5.3 Environmental Tolerance IV (+300)*
*1.5.39 Minion Creation II (+200)*
Taylor focused on her new powers of undeath as she waited for Lisa to recover.
It wasn't something she had ever expected she would get and it reminded one of the starting perks she had passed up that was based on undead. Much like her Cat Soul within her, she gained another form she could deploy, but not both at the same time, she had to choose one or the other. Unlike her cat form, this came with additional perks and protections rather than just claws, ears and a tail.
In this altered form, she would be a Lich, paler then normal but otherwise human looking, someone would have to know what she normally looked like to see she was just unusually pale, it could also be mistaken for makeup. As a nice effect of this form, so long as some part of her brain survived, she would live through anything, regenerate from outright destruction of every other part of her body. Her brain was still her weak point, but even less so than before as she would survive a beheading, even having her skull carved off her head, so long as there was about 10% of it still intact, she would regrow completely from nothing around it.
She also could survive on pure magic when she was in her alternate form, no longer needing to eat normal food. Like the magic that her base's power system released into the air to power the technology she deployed around them. Now she could just eat that and not need normal food, but only in her lich form.
The perks that came with it, that were only active when she had this alternate form out, made her outright ignore 25% of all damage she would take, with complete immunity to illness. Plus she was outright immune to anything that wasn't directed at her. So long as it counted as the environment it could no longer harm her.
Which Taylor found rather odd given that she could take a nap in the sun because the Sun wouldn't be directed at her, but she would still burn herself on a candle because that was 'directed' at her.
Lastly her powers of minion creation had grown, and now she understood how that perk would have changed had she locked it in so long ago. Much like she had guessed, minion creation time was cut down to minutes, rather than an hour, faster than she expected, but that was the only change.
Taylor could tell that more levels of this perk would grant her more perks only in this form, and she focused around, knowing that her two perks could get to higher levels, and there might be others that might evolve from this.
However, she also was aware that the perks she had could fall into her baseform if she locked them in at the greatly increased cost. A mental glance over at her Body Domain, the Physical part of her body told her there were only a few perks left there, meaning the resistance to damage was more likely to roll, although the fact that her environmental resistance had a level under supernatural meant that was less likely to come up.
If she could lock in the damage resistance as what this would roll, she would have locked it in, but since she could tell that wasn't possible, it wasn't worth it and she let it go.
It was a nice perk, and since her familiar cat effects were applied to her entire body and not a part of it, she could switch this on and with some makeup hide the effect. But that would be later, once she was done with Lisa here. Lisa would notice if she suddenly went deathly pale after all.
0o0
It took Lisa a few minutes, and it was very clear when the girl had recovered because she noted.
"We are on the Moon, and you have matter replicators."
"Yep."
"Warp drives?"
"My shuttle will be in Alpha Centri in a day."
"You're not on it?"
"My warehouse doors as you notice can open to any door that I use my key on." Taylor informed Lisa, since the girl had already known most of that already. "I have a door on the shuttle, we can go there now if you like. It is another aspect of my powers."
"Another aspect? What are you, some tinker version of Eidolon?"
"That is one way to put it. The only difference is I don't lose powers" Taylor allowed with a nod.
"Okay, this is all rather damn impressive, but how does this lead to me not wanting my powers If I knew that?"
"I can build federation sensors, which as you know, I was using to study your powers. But I can also build and use long range and higher quality sensors. Which I made, and then scanned Earth with."
"And?" Lisa asked, clearly not getting it.
"I confirmed that the passengers we have are aliens that grant us our powers."
"Which was a theory you had before, wasn't it?"
"I also confirmed that the Endbringers were made by them, to keep humanity contained on Earth."
"What?" Lisa asked in alarm.
Taylor nodded as she continued. "I finally got a proper scan of the Endbringers. There is no way that any parahuman made them, there are far more than just three of them, in fact a total of 20 exist. The others are in standby, waiting to be activated. You, like other parahumans, were given your powers by them to test, as lab rats. The Endbringers are not just to keep us contained on Earth, but to give us worth opponents to promote usage of power."
"Wait, wait, wait." Lisa interteruped. "We are not on Earth."
"My powers don't come from a passenger, Lisa. I lied about that."
"You… what?"
*Power Buy Attempt 2.2.8 The Meaning Of Life (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Taylor let out a mental sigh as her pond in her warehouse gained life of all sorts. Although it made her pond more lively, it wasn't helpful when it came to fighting, not like her last few perks were. Well it might be a nice spot to fish in with her dad once things settled down.
Taylor nodded and continued. "I don't really know where my powers came, other than the fact that it's not the same source as other parahuman powers. Which brings me to why you likely don't want your powers as they were. Everything you experienced was being fed back into the aliens that use Earth as a petri dish, and given how your power modifies your mind as part of your powers, it would make sure you, or any other parahuman doesn't escape the cage. They are closer to parasites because of that, mastering people as needed to promote conflict and power use."
"But you can fix that? Or you wouldn't be telling me that?"
"Sort of. Lisa, I don't just have Star Trek knowledge in my head, but knowledge of powers, like magic. Don't be alarmed here, I am going to show you a bit."
Taylor made certain to draw on her internal magic so she didn't need to get her catgirl features to cast, as she threw up a simple shield that took on the magic array appearance.
Taylor watched as Lisa studied it as it slowly spun in the air.
"What is it doing?" Lisa finally asked after a while.
"It's just a shield spell. It will block up to sniper rounds if they hit it."
Lisa looked over at Taylor and observed.
"You're not a cat girl."
"I am." Taylor replied as she drew on her familiar to let the cat features show.
"Oh. You have to be a cat girl to use magic?"
"No, but that's got to do with my other powers and their interactions. You don't have those powers as such without making you into a cat girl, I can't restore your abilities that your pasanager gave you before. You also would be much weaker and have to train them back up on your own."
"But if I allowed you to make me into a cat girl…"
"Then I could give you exactly what I promised before I disabled your power. The same power, slower and a bit weaker as it runs off your magic, but completely free from external influence. I should warn you that you gain a familiar out of it as well, but it's just a cat. Not something that edits your mind to make you do things." Taylor said as she manifested her familiar cat on the couch and pet it as it purred.
Taylor waited as Lisa pondered that slowly.
"Damn it, Taylor, why did you not give me time to think about this?"
"Your powers are disabled, you have all the time in the world to think about it if you want."
"But I don't have powers anymore and won't unless I let you do more things to me."
"Yes, but I won't force you, Lisa. That's a big difference between what the aliens were doing to you and what I am going to do to you. I am asking first, and I promise that your powers won't puppet you, alter your mind or any of those things."
"I just have to be a cat girl…. But I can hide that I am one like you do?" Lisa pressed a bit more.
"Your magic will be weaker with them hidden, but yes."
"So it's either a little power, completely unlike what I had before, or I end up a cat girl." Lisa repeated.
"Yes."
"How little is little. Please be honest" Lisa asked.
"I am, you could maybe block a punch, but it won't be stable enough to block a bullet without going all the way. All the way and you have what I promised you, your power at a fourth the speed and 80% strength. You would also be limited in the number of activation based on your magic energy but you can train that up and my tech should make it more efficient."
"God, I hope I am making the right choice. But alright, I don't want to lose my powers."
Taylor nodded at Lisa, and indicated to the door as she said.
"Come on then. Let's go and get your power adjusted."
"Can we talk about the stuff about endbringers, aliens and the implications of that a bit first?" Lisa asked.
"Of course, what do you want to know?"
0o0
After Taylor was able to explain enough to get her comfortable with the idea, she brought Lisa back to the medical bay before sedating her.
Once the girl was out. Taylor rested her hand over Lisa's heart as she drew on the powers she could infuse the girl with, needing to pull on them all to make sure that she could get Lisa the power she promised exactly. Focusing and forcing the energy to resonate with what Lisa felt and knew about the mechanics of her old power, supplementing energy and pathways with tech surrounding the girl.
As she had already informed the girl, Lisa wouldn't get a random familiar. She would get a cat.
In order to let Lisa use her magic without needing to have her cat features out all of the time, Taylor drew on Energy Projection, mixing it with the striker magic so that Lisa would have some access to Energy Projection.
Taylor could only do this for her body mod perks that directly worked with magic in some way, which made things odd. Given what she would need Lisa to do, she included Supernatural Resource Recovery as well but things like healing touch were left off for later.
Lisa would only start with a small amount of magic, and she needed the girl to do a lot quickly.
Taylor wished she could share some of her other body mod perks with her father, having him with a few of those would be nice.
But the only ones she could share right now was those that worked with mana, like being a Witch.
Her powers informed her that he would be fine if she made him into one, even if only naturally witches could be female, artificial witches could be male. All children a Witch had would only be a Witch if they were female. Male offspring wouldn't inherit the power as it was currently designed.
Something that Taylor figured she could probably fix, but given the time frame of children was years before they could do anything, she wasn't going to waste her increasingly limited time to do that.
Since Lisa's familiar would be a cat, forced by her power, Taylor felt the infusion modify Lisa, granting her a weaker version of the Creature soul she had. It wasn't something she had expected to happen ahead of time, but on seeing it, she saw that the effort to forge a familiar for Lisa that was a cat forced that on her as well.
Had Taylor not been forcing the outcome of this, allowing Lisa whatever animal familiar and innate power she would naturally have, it wouldn't have done the same.
She made a note of that for later. In Lisa's case that didn't change anything, but in others she imbued it might.
Finishing up, Taylor looked at Lisa, who had shifted slightly when her new tail had appeared. She wasn't in a position to let it form without causing her pain and the medbay bed has automatically accounted for that and made an open section for it..
Taylor shook her head with a smile at what the medical beds in her medical bay did.
She reached up and scratched Lisa's new ears a few times, the sedated girl letting out a bit of a purr at that, a purely biological reaction.
Then Taylor hesitated, before she made up her mind and made one last adjustment to blank.
It was the most difficult choice, because she made blank stop blocking lisas new power. Rather than choosing if she could bypass it, everytime Lisa used it on her, Lisa would always bypass it by default until Taylor changed the setting again, but that only took a mental push so it shouldn't be too much of an issue in case Lisa got compromised.
It was a big show of trust, and she knew such an action was required for Lisa to accept what Taylor was going to ask of her once she woke up. She didn't want to make service to her feel forced or conditional, the foundation of true loyalty needed it to be a pure choice on Lisa's own part without any source of debt at play.
By showing Lisa she could get her powers fixed, it would make Lisa more comfortable with the idea to agree because it wouldn't feel to her like she was forced to join up.
*Power Buy Attempt 2.3.7 Body Mod Pod (100). Bought. Banked 0 points.*
Taylor was quite surprised by the new perk as she saw it appear in her Medical Bay. It was a big one and the timing of getting it was rather suspect.
The pod let its recipients install any body mod perk taylor herself had, any, not just magical ones, in anyone she put inside. She didn't have to do it all at once, a person could use it many times, it just would take an entire day per charge level of a perk, with her free perks counting as a quarter charge for figuring out the time it took to process someone. Taylor also controlled what perks were gained by those in the pod so it wasn't random like her own powers.
Once installed a perk couldn't be revoked, and it only worked on her body mod. Her warehouse perks couldn't be applied to someone else, nor could the forge perks.
She got it right after she finished applying perks to Lisa that had been limited in options, where this would have let her give Lisa some of her body mods without requiring to make her a cat girl.
It's timing was very suspicious to Taylor, although she wouldn't say it was entirely unwelcome given she could now share her body mod perks with not just her father, but those she made into her heralds later.
This was a rather big sign of things to come.
Mindful that once the process was started, it couldn't be interrupted and the person in question would be locked inside until it was done, meaning making her dad immortal like she was would take a day and would be basically required for those that she made her direct heralds.
Taylor studied the pod, quite aware that it would only work on willing people.
Failure of them to understand what would be applied to them would cause it to not take effect.
With that reviewed Taylor left Lisa alone on the bed to go quickly change into her undead form before putting some makeup on to hide it.
She wanted the protection it would give her, more defences were always good.
0o0
*Power Buy Attempt 2.3.12 Opulent Housing (300). Not Bought. Banked 100 points.*
Taylor let out a mental sigh at the perk she failed to get as she returned to the medical bay to wake Lisa.
That perk was completely useless to her as it just increased the quality and number of rooms her housing complex gave her, taking away from the increasingly limited total space she had to work with in her warehouse. Its not like Taylor couldn't already make the rooms opulent with her current perks.
Letting it go, Taylor woke Lisa and watched as the new Cat girl blinked a few times and looked around. Her ear and tail twitching.
"Woh, this is weird." Lisa noted.
"You get used to it." Taylor shrugged
Taylor watched as Lisa reached up to touch her new cat ears.
Then the girl moved her tail in front of her so she could touch it.
"Come on, you can play with yourself later, we have work to do."
"We do?" Lisa asked as she looked at Taylor puzzled.
"If you want to ever use magic, we do. Come on, I got a room set up to help teach you magic properly."
0o0
End of Chapter 09
0o0
Interlude 07: Francis "Trickster" Krouse
0o0
Trickster faced Coil in his office, coming alone as the man before him had asked, the rest of the Travelers had yet to arrive in Brockton Bay, and they wouldn't unless an agreement could be reached.
Trickster had learned long ago that once they were in the city, it was much harder to negotiate better terms as moving Noelle became much harder once they were settled in.
Only if they had an agreement would he let them move in. He started with the only real concern he had, what had drawn them here after Accord directed them to Coil with a promise on his end of the deal.
"You have a cure for Noelle?"
"A possible cure, but it will take some time to put it in place. Which is why Accord sent you to me."
"Not the only reason." Trickster noted, recalling with the recent deaths caused by Noelle's last rampage they had to get out of Boston soon. "He didn't say what this supposed cure of yours is, although he was supposed to look for one for us."
"Are you familiar with Panacea?"
"I can't say I know of him."
"Her, not him." Coil corrected "She is a parahuman that acts as a healer at the local hospital, but her real power is biotinkering. She should be able to return Noelle to normal."
Should was a word that Trickster had heard often, but at the same time he knew that was the best they could get. No one could ever really promise a cure until they had it.
Biotinkering was dangerous, but he also knew that such a thing was likely required to cure her in the end.
"I see, and how soon can she do such?"
"Panacea is a part of New Wave, which means she won't just help a villain, not even if you take Noelle to the hospital. She, like everyone has her vices however, and I can arrange it so she will cure her in order to keep a secret. It will take a few weeks first. In the meantime, I have services you need to do for me to pay for Noelle's accommodations."
"Of course, what are those?" Trickster questioned, neither surprised or concerned at the request. This was how the deals with villains usually went.
Coil slid over a folder and let the man take it.
"Taylor Hebert, she has been causing my organization problems. I need her killed."
"No." Trickster immediately injected as he closed the file and tossed it back on the desk.
"You killed people for Accord." Coil observed as he indicated to the file again.
"Who promised us, much like you, a cure for Noelle. You cure her and we will kill this Taylor for you. But only afterwards. No murders until Noelle is cured."
Trickster studied Coil, he had half a feeling that this would be like Accord all over again, finding a cure for Noelle was hard, and they had often gotten many promises, but no results.
He wasn't about to just jump to murder for Coil without some evidence otherwise. He would kill for a cure, they would kill, but once they started killing it wasn't long before they had to move on as the PRT would take notice sooner or later. Keeping to the unwritten rules unless they had to do otherwise was the only thing that bought them as much time in a location as they did have.
"Are you aware how hard it would be to secure Panacea's services?"
"No, but I don't care either. We can work for you, but no clear violations of the unwritten rules until after Noelle is cured, we don't like having to move around."
Trickster waited, ready to leave if Coil refused. It wasn't worth the effort of moving Noelle into this city, if they had to move her to a new one in a few short weeks anyway.
"Do you consider robbing a tinker that has put her workshop in her house a violation?"
"If it is her workshop, no. Just because she lives there doesn't make it immune to attack. So long as her workshop is there, I don't care where it is, or what else she does there." Trickster noted, guessing where this was going.
"Very well. Then I can agree to this. Ms. Hebert's workshop is in the basement of her house, and while I would much rather have her be eliminated right now, stealing her gear from her would be fine for now. A much more risky operation than just killing her, but I will consider that as proof you will work for me while I secure Panacea's services. You will have other, much more minor jobs as well in that timeframe. I will prepare the vault required for Noelle. But until you have robbed Ms. Hebert of her gear, you won't be allowed to move in. Keep her file, the details of her gear are included. I just require her armor and shield. You can keep the rest yourself or leave them in her house if you like."
0o0
End Interlude 07
0o0
3.7.28 Magitek Mastery (Final Fantasy VI) (600)
In essence, magitek is simply the use of magical energies as a power and fuel source for technology. Your understanding of that outstrips anyone else, and you can now apply this principle to any technology you own. By altering your devices to use something magical in nature, such as a magicite stone, an enchanted item, or just raw magical energy, you can enhance it in every single way and give it unique properties. A suit of armor would become much harder, lighter, and more agile than before, perhaps even boosting the physical abilities of the wearer in line with the magical power source. From there, the armor could make more esoteric uses of the magic, such as casting spells on its own based around the sort of magic infused into it automatically or at the wearer's prompting. This isn't some measly effect restricted to the mundane or basic, no, magic can infused into any sort of technological device to enhance its functionality and give it a partially magical nature and powers. Even life may be infused with magitek technology like this, not only as cybernetics but directly as well. In this situation, it behaves a bit differently. The magic integrates itself into their body, becoming a natural part of them, allowing them access to that magic system and enhancing them physically, but they must grow into it. They start at a much weaker level, where they have to practice and develop their connection to this magic to realize it fully. There's no upper limit to them beyond what the magic's system is capable of, but it can take time, and you can instead choose to infuse living things with a larger amount of magic to grant them greater magical ability much more quickly. Unfortunately, this can have dangerous side effects, as giving them too much to handle at once can lead to mental instability or even insanity, the severity rapidly scaling upwards the more initial energy put in.
1.1.6 Ageless II (100)
You do not age or otherwise degenerate over time in the normal manner:
○ I: Double the lifespan for your race, with peak performance and health throughout. This benefit is applied retroactively in jumps where your starting age would put you past your physical prime.
○ II: As I, but you will never die of old age and will maintain peak performance and health with no degeneration forever. You may choose to halt or resume your visible aging at any time.
2.1.20 Who's Got The Powa (100)
This provides enough electricity to power a city the size of New York City or London, forever, with nary a brown out or power fluctuation ever. It also comes with all the basic wiring hookups, surge protectors, outlets, circuit-breakers, routers, etc you might need… but you'll probably want to get a qualified electrician in at some point… or pick up a companion who does that kind of thing. Purchase of this supplies all facilities inside your Personal Reality with electrical hookups
2.4.9 Classroom (50)
This provides your Reality with a large classroom for you and your companions to use for teaching and learning new things. It is outfitted with all the basic classroom equipment like tables and writing board. If you've Got the Powa, this includes A/V setups and personal computers, and with Pipes, Pipes, Pipes it includes lab equipment. With any of the Food Options it includes cooking tutorial equipment, with a MedBay it includes first aid and medical education supplies, with workshops it includes a teaching workshop of the same kind. Whenever you acquire new technology that could be beneficial to teaching, the Classroom automatically updates to include it if you have Central Control. Also provides basic supplies for all students and slightly boosts teaching aptitude for the teacher, as well as learning speed and concentration for students. All possible safety equipment is automatically installed at no extra cost. Each classroom can seat up to 50 students comfortably. If you have Jump Recording, the classroom can replay all previous classes for new students.
1.4.14 Polyglot (50)
You are fluent in every language that you have encountered. You learn new languages 1,000x as fast as normal, achieving fluency in only about an hour of reading or listening.
1.4.4 Leadership Mastery IV (400)
You find it easy to inspire and bolster followers on a personal level, including instilling personal loyalty.
○ Master (10,000 hours): At true mastery, you can push the boundaries of your field. There are generally only a few practitioners of a skill that reach this level.
1.1.7 Undead Physiology III (Lich) (200)
You are no longer among the living.
○ I: You choose how your undeath manifests cosmetically, from being a walking skeleton to a vampire that is almost human, though you must retain at least one vital organ whose destruction counts as an instantly fatal blow. You still need to consume sustenance, though the form of this will vary by the nature of your undeath. Vampires typically drink blood, zombies eat flesh, and liches consume magical energy. This sustenance is as appetizing to you as regular food to a human, though you may find that some examples taste better or worse than others (such as a vampire preferring the blood of certain people). You also age, though this deterioration is rarely the same as mundane mortal grey hairs.
○ II to V: In addition to the effects of tier I, you gain 400 EP (tier II); 600 EP (tier III); 800 EP (tier IV); or 1000 EP (tier V) to spend on abilities associated with your type of undead, below.
1.1.2 Physical Resistance II (100)
Your body resists negative effects.
○ I: You are immune to normal diseases, parasites, bacteria, toxins, and the degenerative effects of radiation.
○ II: You are immune to the items listed in tier I, regardless of origin. When you are injured, the injury is approximately 25% less than it would be otherwise. You also have a high pain tolerance.
1.5.3 Environmental Tolerance IV (400)
You are not damaged by hazardous environments, though this does not provide you a method of propulsion.
○ III: As tier II, but the protection extends to any non-magical environmental source.
○ IV: As tier III, but the protection extends to magical environments such as energy planes.
1.5.39 Minion Creation II (400)
You can create minions of a general type such as vampire spawn, undead, elemental servants, or animals. Minions tend to be no stronger than a regular human, fairly dumb, and short-lived or, at least, their loyalty is. Minions created from thin air vanish within an hour or two, while those created from appropriate reagents may last days or weeks depending on the quality of the reagents. Undead created from the living beings or corpses of formerly living beings remain undead until destroyed. This ability can be re-applied before the last application fades to extend its benefits. Initially, a minion creator may only command the loyalty of two minions at a time, but with practice and effort, this amount can be increased. At your discretion, you may choose to 're-summon' the same creature when using this ability and allow it to have continuous memories with the last time it was 'summoned'.
○ I: Creating minions is generally a slow process, taking about an hour.
○ II: Creating minions is faster, taking only minutes.
2.2.8 The Meaning Of Life (100)
This The Pond Upgrade adds in fish and shellfish and pondweed/seaweed to your pond. Also the occasional duck or swan or other waterfowl. Maybe some frogs or lizards or small reptilians, but nothing dangerous… unless you bought a specific limitation.
2.3.7 Body Mod Pod (100)
Ever wanted to run a Companion or friend through the Body Mod? Now you can. Have fun. This pod is infinitely reusable as long as each person only uses it once. People using this get access to the same Body Mod Supplement as you used. You can't use this to run yourself through Body Mod again. Anything that lacks a humanoid form can be given one by this machine
* Modded for story. Anyone can use it as many times as they like, but it takes a day per charge level to install a feature, Taylor must have the perk in question to apply it to someone else.*
*Clarification, only things Sapient enough to understand what is being done to them and agree to such can use the body mod pod*
